Tag Archives: Horror

Prom Night (2008) Review

Posted on by
Reply


Why’s this poster so awful?? Seriously you can’t tell anything about the film from this and if anything it just makes you want to stay away. Trust me this is not the way to advertise any kind of film. Regardless this is a really bad title though so you will want to stay away. It ends up being a painful experience from start to finish with no real smart characters.

The movie starts off with Donna watching her family get murdered by a psychopath named Richard. We jump to the future where she is now being taken care of by her uncle and aunt. She is still rather traumatized but wants to at least try and enjoy her prom. It should be the perfect day and so she heads out to be with her friends. Unfortunately though Richard has escaped from prison and because everyone is incompetent in this film it took 3 days for the cops to be notified. They let the guardians know but instead of taking Donna out….they decide to let the prom continue since it would be too traumatic to cancel. Okay……how many victims will it take this time before Richard is stopped?

There are so many issues with this film but I think it’s safe to say that the biggest issue you will run into right away is just how depressing and mean spirited the film is. A high body count is to be expected but so many people keep dying and nobody is safe. A lot of these characters had nothing to do with the story and they’re still getting bumped off. Sure that’s technically true for a lot of slashers like this but I think part of the problem with having this take place in the school is you’re basically having a bunch of kids get murdered the whole time. We had an elementary school kid get bumped off in the intro even which is taking things a step farther.

Allowing the prom to continue is also complete insanity. Winn has a moment where he mentions that they don’t see any reason why Richard would come here. Really? They see no reason why the crazy psychopath who made it explicitly clear that he would do whatever it took to go back to Donna would try to attack her now that he’s broken out? That had to be one of the silliest lines in the film without a doubt. I could barely believe what I was hearing. Come on………come onnnnnnnnnnn.

Okay so the prom’s going to continue, but you’re going to let the hotel staff know that there’s a crazy guy on the lookout right? No, the hotel concierge asks the police officer if they should be afraid and he just says “Nah, probably nothing to worry about” and leaves. The hotel staff don’t know anything is wrong until near the end of the film so of course they start to get picked off too. I’d be fuming if I was the sole survivor from the hotel staff because that makes no sense.

Then of course Winn isn’t able to get the villain at the hotel so he tells the two police officers to keep a lookout at the house. Naturally both have to be completely isolated so taking them down is child’s play. Why even stay at the house? The first order of business should have been to take the characters over to the police station. Keeping them in the house that Richard knows the address of is crazy. Even worse is that Donna is kept to her room…where she is right next to a window. You can’t make this stuff up.

Now granted, Richard still shouldn’t have gotten as far as he does but apparently he is so skilled that he can take out virtually every opponent without making a sound. The house is also sound proof I guess because even with the door open and Donna screaming, the parents and Winn can’t hear her while not being all that far away? The amount of plot holes and stretches of imagination here are really pretty insane.

Going back to the tragic part though, it just feels like the film should have let more of the characters get a happy ending. Pretty much everyone was destroyed and the sole survivors are going to have a complex for the rest of their life. It doesn’t stop the film from having a fairly upbeat song for the credits but there’s nothing happy about the ending. There’s nothing really happy about the film in general which is something I have an issue with. A slasher film will rarely be happy of course but the tonal contrast here was a bit much. The film would try to be really happy at times and it didn’t work because obviously you can’t feel that good when everyone’s getting destroyed.

The film’s not as bloody as you would expect but it still tries to be as violent as possible within the confines of not being an R rated horror flick. Characters get stabbed tons of times and the deaths are all rather grisly. Nobody seems able to put up even the slightest amount of a fight against this guy and the whole film feels futile for the heroes. Every scene has so much build up that you see the deaths coming several minutes in advance which is annoying. There are a ton of fake jump scares but they’re always before the real death to the point where you can pretty much set your watch to them.

At one point Dillon even has a dream of the future about what’s about to happen and….she decides to do everything that she did in the dream anyway. A bit of an odd choice if you ask me, wouldn’t you want to not do what you did in the dream even if it wasn’t real? I just don’t see why you would actually try to copy your answers there. Seems like a recipe for disaster by any metric. It’s why hiding under the bed wouldn’t be a good idea since that worked last time so don’t do the same thing twice. It was also rough that she didn’t step in to save her mother. Obviously that’s easier said than done and in the moment it’s hard to make that decision but it’s yet another brutal scene. The cast of characters are all pretty forgettable and the romances are all paper thin. There’s just nothing of substance in this title. The film almost should have just played this off as part parody with the heroes deciding to have the prom party instead of cancelling it.

I keep going back to that because the whole scenario is absolutely crazy. Nothing makes sense in this film, people don’t act the way they should with a mass murderer on the loose with an obvious place of attack. At least in most films the characters reasonably don’t know where the villain will be but this time they actually do know. A whole lot of lives could have been saved if Winn did the responsible thing instead of waiting to see this all play out.

Overall, Prom Night is a film that you should absolutely avoid. There are no redeeming qualities to be found in this film. It starts off rather brutally and ends on that same note. There are no scenes that are actually all that happy because they are happening in the context of ugly things about to happen to the cast. There was basically no escape for them and any victory is a rather hollow one. The slasher genre tends to be doomed right from the jump and this film doesn’t do anything to convince you otherwise. It’s very by the numbers and for a genre like this that’s about as bad as it gets.

Overall 1/10

Event Horizon Review

Posted on by
Reply

This review is of the edited TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

Event Horizon is one of those films that reminds me why I’d never want to be stuck anywhere in outer space or underwater. At the end of the day you’re stuck with a bunch of people that could go crazy at any point. Sure you might know them to an extent but being on your own for a long amount of time can change everything. This film slowly has the cast cracking and the whole time you’re shaking your head. They lack the willpower to succeed!

The movie starts with a crew being formed to try and find a spaceship that went missing many years ago. The crew isn’t thrilled about this since they were on vacation but hey a mission’s a mission right? Well Dr. Weir will be coming with them to explain the specifics since this mission is very different from most. Of course that’s another reason for the crew to dislike the mission since they aren’t finding out the truth until they’re stuck in space. Basically they have to use some super experimental technology to jump through a wormhole into another dimension to grab the ship and then head back. Sure it didn’t work for the first ship but the tech is better now! Well they do the jump and make it to the other ship but now their ship is busted. The heroes are ready to make the repairs but weird things start happening. The crew see visions and are slowly going crazy. Will they ever be able to go home?

So this film’s mostly pretty bad but I can say it wasn’t all bad. I really liked the music. Seriously it was pretty great, felt like I was entering some kind of big action movie. Mix that in with the sci-fi effects and yeah this definitely seemed like a winner. That being said, It’s one of the only positives I can really say about the film. The rest of it tends to go for a lot of shock value and just doesn’t seem like a good idea when you’re trying to be a good film. The characters make a bunch of awful decisions and while you can blame some of it on “the darkness” it doesn’t help them.

Okay so lets start with Dr. Weir. At first he seems fairly reasonable. He wants to complete this mission and is taking it super seriously. He doesn’t get into space as much as the crew so he doesn’t really comprehend the dangers but he did build this experimental sci-fi tech so if anyone knows how to pull this off then it should be him. Unfortunately he has significant skeletons in the closet which start to break him. The ship shows everyone illusions and so of course his are easy to pull out from the past. It’s a rather brutal one and the whole build up to the tragedy is rough.

The film loves its special effects to make the characters as ugly as possible. Lets just say there is a ton of violence in this film. I would easily put it on the high end for a horror film. Not just because of what happens in the present like multiple characters getting impaled, disfigured, and blown up in the vacuum of space but also in the quick flashes the characters get when the ship is messing with their minds. It’s typically all happening so fast that you can barely even tell what is happening, only that there’s something bloody and disturbing on the screen.

Still even with the visions it’s hard to feel any sympathy for Weir. The guy is really responsible for this mission in the first place so he needed to hold it together. By the end he is a complete pawn who wouldn’t even be all right if his plan succeeds which hurts quite a lot. As a villain if you don’t really have a grand master plan or anything like that then you are basically just spinning your wheels. You’re not actually doing anything and at that point you’re just a psycho.

Starck serves as the main heroine here and does her best. She is able to resist the illusions better than most of the characters and has to put up with everyone being really slow on the uptake. The most annoying moment for her had to be when the captain told her to find an explanation on what was going on. She did find the reason (evil spirits) but he didn’t believe her. It’s a shame because by this point in the film you’d think that would be a very credible option. Seriously you had everyone seeing crazy illusions, things not working as they should and a mysterious reactor turning on when that’s supposed to be impossible? You’d think the captain would hear her out at least.

Miller is the captain and for the most part he looks good. While he didn’t believe Starck, at least he did spend most of his screen time trying to keep the crew from murdering each other. He had a tight grasp of what it means to be a leader and was always making the hard calls. I would say he was the most reasonable member of the team and was also able to realize that the spirit was manipulating him with the past later on. He has a big scene in the end as well. The guy was definitely real determined.

Throughout the movie you’ve really got a big survival thriller feel going on. In general that should be solid as the characters try to live but with the evil spirit using the powers of memories and illusions it’s just not thrilling. You already know the characters will fall for this and that there isn’t much they can do about it. That’s the most annoying part about all of this. For example one character sees her son running around the spaceship. Obviously there is no way he can be here and yet she falls for it anyway.

It’s up to you to determine to just what extent the spirit has full mental control over the characters but evidently it is a massive amount. The characters seem to be completely unable to resist its control at times and other times they at least know that something iffy is going on. I think if you cut out all of the random violence then you may have something here. Perhaps it will be less “exciting” in terms of action but I think the movie would be able to hold its own. The way it is there just isn’t anything to like about it once the spirit starts to make its presence felt. Seeing the characters start to get corrupted one after another is supremely annoying.

As you’d expect the ending does have a bit of a horror zinger to end things off with but it’s a bi more passive than you’d expect. I actually think the movie could have been a whole lot bolder here. The ending is definitely throwing some strong implications at you and of course I’m on the side that everyone’s doomed but you can always look at the ending in a different way. It’s certainly open for interpretation.

Overall, Event Horizon really went off the deep end. The initial scenes are decent, I would say it started out well. It all just goes downhill once the evil spirit starts to consume everyone and trick them into being destroyed. The film starts to feel aimless as it’s just about everyone dying in gruesome ways. Additionally there seems to be no real way to escape the evil influence or to fight back against it so everything seems futile. The idea of being alone in space with something after you is absolutely solid but they should go with a more tangible threat next time. Something like….an alien!

Overall 1/10

Die, Monster, Die! Review

Posted on by
Reply


This movie definitely doesn’t feel like the average horror title and I’d say that shows how Lovecraft handles things a bit differently in general. This is more of a slow burn with a lot of solid atmosphere and suspicious things going around. There is a violent visual or two but for the most part this film isn’t going for a lot of violence or anything like that. I think it could have stood out a bit more with a more engaging plot and cast of characters but it’s a decent title.

The movie starts off with a guy named Stephen looking for his girlfriend’s house but whenever he mentions the name of the place people refuse to talk to him. Nobody will give him the time of day at all and it’s starting to tick him off. Finally he finds the place and her father Nahum insists that he leave. Stephen will do no such thing and gladly meets up with Susan anyway. She introduces him to her mother who seems nice enough and now Stephen can stay to have a good time. But will it be a safe time? He hears weird sounds in the night, Nahum continues to be really shady and in general the place feels like its got a rotten edge to it.

If I was Stephen I’d probably just ask Susan to come with me and get out of there right away. The longer you stay at this place the worse it gets but once you’re thrown into the mystery it’s hard to leave at that point. What is Nahum hiding? Until Stephen figures that out then he knows Susan will probably be in danger. So one way to escape danger is to leave. He seems like a reasonably tough guy too and wasn’t taking the town’s nonsense. You need to be a bit stubborn like that if you want to succeed when going to a new town for the first time. I was also glad that he was not intimidated by Nahum and intended to say from the start. Now, it’s clear that Nahum cares about his daughter but at the same time he’s just not really doing much to protect her at all.

That’s my main problem with Nahum. He is so passive about the whole thing. Sure he tells Stephen to stay away but on his own what is he really doing? It’s not until the very climax of the film that he makes the obvious call to deal with the threat and by then it’s a bit late. Lets just say that there’s some radiation involved and Nahum did the equivalent of throwing the source in a box. That was never going to go very far and in the meantime casualties were piling up.

I guess you could chalk some of this up to the film going for a vibe of being very strange but it wasn’t the most satisfying execution. I’d also say that Susan seemed really slow on the uptake since she didn’t really seem to know what was going on and Nahum wasn’t being very subtle about how shady he was. Seriously the locked rooms, “You can’t go in there” and other lines didn’t set off any alarm bells? The whole place even looked spooky during the daytime which is a massive red flag.

As always the townsfolk were really not helpful in the slightest though. They could have at least given Stephen a hint as to why they wouldn’t talk to him or help the guy get to the house. Instead it was the same vague warnings of not saying anything so I can’t give the town any credit at all. Having them do something could have given this film the bolt of energy that it needed.

Because at the end of the day I wouldn’t say the film made any big mistakes. If anything my only real problem with it was that it could be a bit dull at times. I wouldn’t say this film was a real page turner. You didn’t care much about the lore as it was happening and this wasn’t a film that was going to suddenly start throwing in a lot of fight scenes or plot twists after all. So in that case you need top tier writing or something to really give the film energy.

The writing is good. I may not say amazing but it’s got that retro feel that I always enjoy and so that part’s okay enough. It just needed more though, whether it be a fun antagonist or something like that. Maybe the problem is that for all the build up of the odd mystery within the dungeon, it wasn’t as exciting as I expected. The film did surprise me since I hadn’t guessed what the actual twist was going to be, but eh it wasn’t enough. So I wouldn’t say the movie’s bad or anything but it wasn’t very solid either. I’d end up putting it right in the middle.

Overall, The movie’s title is a lot more colorful and intense than the actual movie itself. You’d expect a monster running around and some kind of crazy climax but that isn’t the case at all. There is sort of a “monster” running around if you really stretch the term and of course there is a climax but it’s just not what you would really be expecting. It’s not a frenzy of action and if anything you just feel bad for the victims who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. When you finish this film it will quickly be smothered by the more popular horror titles and you’ll be lucky to remember more than bits and pieces within a year. If you’re a big fan of Lovecraft works then you should check it out but I expect most of the other titles will be more memorable. The suspense is what’s supposed to sell you after all and I’m confident that more of them would be able to pull this off. This one just couldn’t get the vibe right.

Overall 5/10

The Hand that Rocks The Cradle Review

Posted on by
Reply

This review is based on the TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

There are some films where you wonder how the plot can work without the main characters looking awful and then you realize that they just do look awful and that’s how the film happens. This should be over in a few minutes if the main characters played it smart tbh but that’s how it goes I guess. I’d say this film’s more of a skip, you don’t really need to check it out.

The movie starts off with Claire and her husband Michael getting ready for her next baby to be born. Unfortunately the doctor at the clinic turns out to be a full criminal and takes advantage of Claire so they sue him and the guy quickly deletes himself. His wife tries to stay strong but fails and when she faints her baby is lost. The wife swears revenge on the main characters and changes her alias to Peyton. Peyton quickly heads to the house and is immediately hired by Claire to be the nanny to help out around the house. Now Peyton can begin work on splitting the family apart and ultimately murdering Claire. How will she pull this off though?

So it turns out that letting a random stranger into your house without any real background checks can be a real danger eh? Peyton starts misplacing items, destroying reports, and basically making Claire look really bad since it’s like she’s losing her mind. Peyton makes sure to threaten the gardener, manipulate Claire’s older daughter against her, and even directly handle the baby far more often than Claire so he stops liking her. Yes it’s all very easy…because the characters make it easy. Seriously none of this should be working out at all.

First off we have Peyton hanging out with the baby more than Claire. Claire should be with the baby as often as possible. Sure, she’s busy but why is Peyton basically left all day to give the baby walks, put her to bed, etc? That should still all be Claire’s duty and not because it’s a job but because you want to be with your baby right? Claire does have asthma and can get sickly at times but not all the time so this always felt a little forced. When you’ve just had a kid you’re usually going to be staying around the house a lot. I know they hired a nanny for a reason but yeah this was not a good idea.

Put it this way, even if Peyton wasn’t evil, it’s still possible that the kid and baby would end up bonding with the nanny over the parents if they spent so much more time with her. It just makes sense. It also would help if the parents actually listened a bit more. When Peyton frames the gardener, they don’t even try to listen to their daughter about how it was all fixed. Yeah the evidence was pretty bad so I wouldn’t expect them to be too reasonable but at least listen to her side for a bit right?

For the most part I would say that Peyton’s not even that subtle about all of this. Wearing her necklace as if to boast about how she’s the mother now, her seduction attempt on the husband, etc. At least to the guy’s credit he never cracks or comes close to cracking on that front but these are all massive red flags. Peyton’s initial appearance was a huge red flag since she wasn’t from any agency and happened to be in the neighborhood? Cmon now it may be a beautiful day in the neighborhood but you don’t just happen to be wandering around one.

Then even once they find out Peyton is the villain and have to take her down they handle is horribly. The husband lets himself get thrown down a flight of stairs and the main heroine’s stab attempt didn’t go very well. This is why you need to at least know some basic self defense. Or if you’re going to run, then run right away. Waiting at the house to pack everything up is always going to take way too long when you have a villain on the loose. You feel bad for Claire’s best friend quite a lot since she was at least making some headway but got way too sloppy towards the end. The classic reverse psychology trick worked on her.

The whole deception to make Claire jealous by revealing that her husband was hanging out with the friend was also really contrived. Look, surprise parties can be fun but never if it means lying to your wife about it. What matters more, keeping the secret or keeping her trust? It should be a really obvious decision or at least I would hope that it is. That’s where you just tell her that there is a surprise party coming up and to keep it on the downlow or something like that.

He has to know how it would look since the friend was an old ex of his. In general you don’t want your husband or wife to hang out with an ex in general, let alone in secret. Now it all comes down to trust so if you’re comfortable with your partner still seeing an ex then hey, power to you. Me personally? Nahhhhhhh, the ex needs to leave the picture completely. It’s way too dangerous to keep an ex around so there’s no hanging out as friends after that. It’s tough terms but that’s just how it has to be in order to keep the relationship strong.

Then you have Solomon who has a rather tragic role for most of this. He’s disabled so he already has a tough time explaining himself or talking so when he’s framed there isn’t a whole lot that he can do about it. He’s just trying to help but he’s in a really tough position the whole time. Especially since you see this coming right from the start of the movie, you can only watch and wait for the inevitable.

Aside from the story being rather weak and forced, the movie just isn’t generally high quality. Using the doctor for shock value at the start of the move is a whole scene that could have been completely skipped. Make up some other reason for revenge, but starting off the movie with Claire being attacked like that was pretty bad. The film also had some obvious fanservice in feeding the baby and while that shows how insane Peyton is in her role, you definitely don’t need to linger on those moments. Mix in the sub par writing and you don’t have a winning movie here.

Overall, This is a movie that only works when all of the characters make the worst decisions as if this was a horror movie. The story only starts at all because they happened to pick Peyton out of all the available candidates without bothering to look into her records at all. Who wouldn’t do their due diligence when you have a baby and a kid in the house right? Then you have the husband randomly keeping a secret when he shouldn’t have, a “accident” murdering the friend and not immediately grabbing a shotgun, the important report completely vanishing, etc. At least Claire picks up on the list of odd coincidences later on but sure took her time in doing so. Yeah this is one you should definitely skip.

Overall 2/10

Ghoulies II Review

Posted on by
Reply


Ghoulies may have been a dreadfully awful film but would the sequel be able to save the franchise? Unfortunately I can confirm that it did not. It does defeat the first film but it’s a marginal victory at best because these two are still on the same level. It may be taking on a different approach than the first Ghoulies but I wouldn’t really say that it learned any lessons. The only impressive part about this movie is how it’s not rated R since it felt extremely violent but I suppose it’s because most of the more painful deaths are heard/implied but not really seen. It’s clever directing but not going to save this one.

The movie focuses around an attraction at a local circus about scaring people. I forget the term for the scarehouse but basically you go in to get spooked by people in costumes and scary images. Unfortunately it’s not doing so well and corporate has decided to shut the place down. They have one last weekend to get their sales up but the main characters aren’t so confident. The only 3 employees is a teen who’s in over his head, a short guy who has trouble being convincingly scary, and an old man who is constantly drunk. Yeah this may be the end of the line but at least they can escape with their lives right?

So where do the Ghoulies come in? Well they get summoned by the old man because that’s how this works now and they decide to start bumping people off left and right. Now again you have to consider that this is part comedy to explain why the film goes the way that it does. It’s heavily being inspired by the Gremlins so the characters are being a little extra quirky and manic the whole time. They have a lot more personality than last time at least but I still couldn’t say that they ever got all that interesting either way. At the end of the day they’re still just sinister monsters without much reason and purpose.

It can be rather frustrating when you see them murdering everyone and the audience is just cheering as they watch what they think is a show. Of course it should be obvious but hey these are not the brightest bulbs in the bunch. Not by a longshot unfortunately. The Ghoulies also don’t seem all that powerful so you constantly wonder how they are doing so well. This movie does establish that they are super durable. Acid, stabbings, and bullets are not enough to put them down. They seem functionally immortal as every injury promptly heals itself. So that definitely puts the characters in a bit of a bind. If they would use basic teamwork or stop taking their eyes off of the creatures this would be easy but unfortunately that never happens.

I’ve always said that small creatures are more terrifying than huge ones and I think this movie supports the point well. Put it this way, if you’re faced off with a massive monster then you’re probably dying instantly when it steps on you or fires off a massive energy blast. With a small creature it’s death by a million cuts, bites, etc. It’s the worst way to go. They chose the most disturbing death in the film for the corporate guy and you can’t help but feel bad for him. He certainly wasn’t a nice guy by any means but you hate to see anyone go out like that.

Many characters are destroyed in this one as the Ghoulies really take names and add onto their body count. It’s impressive on one hand but the film quickly loses focus of anything else. It’s not devoid of plot like the first film though. At least we do have the drama with the circus and a number f real characters. There is some drama with the main heroine getting ready to leave the circus and so you actually remember things about this movie aside from the ghoulies. Ultimately it just isn’t enough to save the film.

Even if you put aside all of the excessive violence here, there aren’t any real strengths that would make you watch the film. The old man getting massively drunk on the day when he knew his friends were counting on him was awful. Seriously you can’t let people down like that and it put him in a very poor position to fight back. Then the film can feel a bit mean spirited with a lot of random teenagers getting murdered who didn’t do anything to deserve it. At least let them go out quickly as opposed to all the creative way the Ghoulies get them. An instant death would definitely have been way preferable.

There is a bit of a romance plot here but it doesn’t really serve any point in the film. The film really should have spent more time giving the characters development so you can root for them to fight the Ghoulies. For example one scene that was actually decent was when the main guy calls all of his friends from the circus over to help and they actually do. They all drop everything to help out and it was nice to see that they all had each other’s back. That’s what you would like to see in this kind of situation and it’s annoying that the fight was still really close.

Again, the Ghoulies are super durable and can keep on regenerating but in terms of strength they shouldn’t be that bad. Just keep your eye on the monsters and you should be fine. We do briefly get an even bigger Ghoulie later on which was interesting but you don’t want to leave your hopes in the hands of a monster like that. When you have guns and the numbers advantage this shouldn’t be so crazy. If the Ghoulies could talk then at least it would be interesting to hear what their plan for the world is beyond total chaos.

Overall, Ghoulies II is really more of the same as the first one. This one is definitely better to be sure but not enough so to earn it any extra stars. I wouldn’t say there is any true reason to check this one out. You’re just watching the Ghoulies murder everyone in gruesome ways and that is absolutely not enough to constitute a real plot. Throw in some better characters as well as some restraint and then we can talk. In the meantime I don’t have much hopes for the next two Ghoulies films to be honest. Maybe they can be decent but I definitely have massive doubts.

Overall 1/10

Ghoulies Review

Posted on by
2


The Ghoulies is one of those films that really doesn’t seem super sure on exactly what it wants to do. One one hand it’s usually a very disturbing horror type film with a lot of crazy visuals and goes fairly high up on the violence chart. On the other hand you have many scenes with comedy music playing and so you’re wondering just how seriously you’re supposed to take all of this. It’s certainly a tricky call but in the end all I can say is that it wasn’t able to pull this off.

The movie starts with a cult trying to sacrifice a baby but the baby’s mother is able to put a talisman around him for protection just in time. She’s destroyed but the baby is allowed to leave. Years later Jonathan has grown up to be a rather ordinary person and he ended up inheriting a rather spooky house. That’s his queue to invite all his friends over while he and Rebecca figure they will have the time of their lives. It all goes sideways rather quickly though as Jonathan wants to do a summoning and then monsters start to murder everyone. Is there any way out of here?

In a way the film is trying to emulate the success of the Gremlins but it is failing spectacularly. I wasn’t a particularly big fan of the Gremlins myself but you could tell that it tried more. The humor landed a lot more naturally and the main cast was better. A big issue here is that Jonathan isn’t likable at all even before he gets controlled. He’s really insistent on all of the characters performing the summoning to the point where he starts to get really upset about the whole thing. You could say that the atmosphere was already starting to control him but I think the guy just wasn’t very well balanced from the start.

As the film goes on he keeps on making more and more mistakes which endanger everyone around him. There’s no point where we get to see him just being a nice guy and that’s something that really hurts him. It’s not like the other characters were much better though. The teens were busy getting drunk and messing around the whole time. None of them thought that this whole party was a bad idea and none of them seemed to have any restraint. They’d all be considered as bad influences out in the world and you wouldn’t want to be in this friend group.

Whenever I see all the memes about how the characters really put themselves into these dangerous situations in horror films like wanting to use a spirit board or driving into a seedy hotel it does make you wince. This one’s the same thing with the whole summoning. Even if you thought it was all a joke, why even go through with it? What’s the upside? Are you so bored that doing this is the best form of entertainment you can think of? Because if it’s the latter then that’s really bad. You have the whole place to yourself and all your friends so entertainment should really be just about unlimited.

As mentioned the film could also be surprisingly violent at times. Characters are often wounded in the face/neck and the effects all seem rather practical so you feel the intensity. I was even surprised the film was PG-13 because of how graphic it could get. Maybe it’s just the way the bites went since it looked painful but technically wasn’t as explicit as it could have been. That’s certainly a possibility at least but eh they definitely should have toned that down somewhat.

The movie also started on a low note with the cult trying to sacrifice the baby. At least it didn’t actually happen unlike another movie but the fact that the mom ended up getting sacrificed and nobody did anything about it was rough. Of course it’s a cult so likely everyone there was basically evil but it’s still annoying regardless. It’s also one of those things where the villains have so many powers and the heroes can’t do anything about it so it isn’t even compelling. With a stronger hero cast perhaps there’s something you could do but that wasn’t the case here.

The story also ends early on as it’s just the characters messing around and getting folded by the enemies everywhere. The main villain Malcolm is one of the most generic evil masterminds you’ll ever see. I guess the guy just wants destruction but there’s nothing about him that stands out. If he wasn’t so powerful then he would be doomed. He’s not too smart with how roundabout his plan was and he fumbles the ball constantly. With his abilities he should never lose so that means he has to make odd choices in order to give the heroes a shot. Again, that’s not a high value villain.

If I’d give the film credit for anything, I’ll say that the creature designs weren’t half bad. They’re not amazing or anything but the small green monsters were a little intimidating. In particular there is one scene where they jump out of one of those small wooden jesters that was intense. Still not enough to outweigh all the negatives of the film but hey it’s a start right? Now just take away the fanservice, the awful romance, the terrible characters, the bad plot, etc and then you can start a real conversation about this one.

Overall, Ghoulies is a film I absolutely recommend skipping. There is nothing much of value to be found here and it’s really just an excuse to see monsters eating everyone. The plot was probably just written around that concept instead of being planned out first. It’s just one of those films with the characters messing around with satanic elements and quickly finding out that this was a bad idea. Should have been obvious but that’s how it goes. At least we did get a half hearted ending cliffhanger which the film still can’t decide if it’s trying to be funny or not. I figure at this point the enemies are on their side so it’s more of a happy ending than anything but at the same time could you ever really trust them? I’d be very hard pressed to trust any creature that just tried to murder me.

Overall 1/10

Blacula Review

Posted on by
2


Oof, this film was pretty bad. I’m just going to say it upfront, this one was not a winner by any stretch of the imagination. Initially it started off with a little potential as the main character seems like a reasonable guy. Perhaps he would be an anti-hero of sorts who only feeds on the blood of the wicked. A lot of potential right there but nah it just becomes another B version of the Dracula film which was already quite bad. There isn’t much to redeem about this film to be honest.

The movie starts off with a guy going to Dracula and asking him to stop slavery basically. Dracula laughs and basically confirms that he loves slavery and this whole thing was a trap. The guy tries to fight him off but promptly gets bitten. His wife dies and the guy is left in the tomb. Many years later, he wakes up and is now the vampire known as Blacula!! Surely he will now be going around trying to help people out, destroy any other vampires in existence and keep onto his righteous cause right? Wrong!! He hungers and so he begins to drain everyone as he goes through life. He then finds a girl who looks like his late wife and decides that he wants her. Can the others stop him?

As you can probably guess one of my big issues here is just how Blacula is suddenly super evil. As a normal person he was a good guy trying to do the right thing. Why did he have to suddenly fall to such depths now? It doesn’t make sense and critically assassinates his character. There’s also no reason for this. You could absolutely have him fall in love with this lady and try to win her over without all the threats and bumping everyone off. The main villain here could have just been Dracula who had kept on living throughout all of these years. Boom you’d have a great story right there.

Unfortunately this film could not think things through and just went with this sad approach instead. The movie plays out exactly as you would expect with Blacula picking everyone off. One of the worst instances of this is when he is running through the streets and bumps into a cab. So the driver gets out and she naturally gives him a talking too…and he decides to murder her? Not to mention that he’s hunting around a black neighborhood. You can see the irony here right?? He was fighting to stop slavery, give equal rights to all…and now he’s basically murdering a bunch of the black community.

It undermines his character even more. Now if you said that Dracula injected his personality into Blacula then that could have been something. Honestly it would still have been a very baffling decision but at least it would make sense but the film never even hints at that. At best you can say we do see how he is losing his mind and getting more feral but that’s just standard vampire stuff. There’s still nothing in there that would cause his personality to do a complete 180. This is definitely a very lackluster film I have to say.

Of course it has the usual vampire movie issues as well like all the blood draining and everything. No matter how many times I see it I still find the whole thing a bit revolting. You should do vampire films without the draining. Think about it and you’ll see that I’m right. Have the vampires scare people in a different way and then we’re good. Like seeing Blacula in a dark alley with the cape is already scary so if you know he’s going to murder you then you don’t need the draining.

Okay enough about Blacula. Tina is the main heroine here and she doesn’t look great but you also have to cut her some slack because some of that is the subtle vampire mind control. Also it’s tough because she doesn’t really have an out here. Technically no matter where she goes or what she does there is no way to escape this guy. It’s a rather cruel environment to be in without a way out. Then you have Thomas who mainly leads the search in trying to stop this guy. He’s a reasonable main guy doing his best to help out but there’s nothing about him that particularly stands out. Much like this movie in general…..

Still, he’s good and does get results. The movie’s ending isn’t particularly satisfying but the movie did end which is what I was waiting for. At last the journey was over. There are some silver linings here like the characters but on the whole this film just makes no sense. They seriously need to remake it but with Blacula as an anti-hero. Or if you want him to be a true villain, have Dracula put him into stasis and when he wakes up have him appear in an area where his community is being terrorized or something. So now he wants revenge on the world. That kind of gimmick would go a long way. Just about anything instead of what we got to be honest.

The dark atmosphere worked well and the film had a lot of tension. So capitalize on all of that and maybe, just maybe you will have given the film a fighting chance to do something good. I wouldn’t hold my breath since it would still be a vampire film and would likely have the same issues though. At the end of the day there are very few good vampire films and I don’t see that really changing in the future.

Overall, Blacula is definitely a pretty bad film. In the end the movie did not even use the premise at all. Change Blacula to Dracula and nothing about the film changes. That’s probably the worst part in all of this because then it makes the whole thing pointless. You’ll be shaking your head the whole time and wondering why the movie even exists. If you want to watch a vampire film then watch The Batman vs Dracula instead. Hardly my favorite Batman film out there but it still blows this one away with ease.

Overall 1/10

One Missed Call Review

Posted on by
Reply


It’s time for a retro horror film and One Missed Call definitely lives up to what you would expect there. It’s a horror film that plays it very by the numbers without a whole lot going for it beyond being…well a classic horror film. This one involves phones and a villain so powerful that it’s like you’re fighting against destiny itself. The film doesn’t have a particularly strong cast or memorable visuals to keep it afloat but at the same time it’s certainly not the worth horror film I’ve seen. I doubt I’ll even remember it too vividly several years from now.

The movie starts with the most intense scene in the film to be honest as a lady walks towards a pond when a giant hand emerges and drags her under. It also grabs the cat so the film decided to start off with an animal death for some bizarre reason. Leaving that aside for a moment though, the scene gave the villain a pretty intense design right off the gate and it was memorable. It reminded me of the Redead hands from the Legend of Zelda games. Unfortunately after this you will not see any memorable designs like that at all. In fact once we see the actual mastermind at the end of the film, the villain looks super unimpressive. Basically normal if you will and that’s no fun.

All right so back to the plot. Everyone is worried about the way the girl died and then another girl gets a voicemail from her number but it’s from a future date and has another girl’s voice. This girl promptly dies at the exact time of the voicemail and this “Phone curse” continues to spread. Each victim receives a call from the last victim with a voicemail dated at the exact time that the next victim will die. In essence the instant you receive this voicemail you are already dead which is a sobering thought unless you can escape destiny. Beth is the main heroine of the movie and she has a little time while all of her friends are bumped off. Once they are gone though then she will be next in the firing line. Oh I should also mention every victim gets a candy that they spit out after they die. Pretty random detail but its so random that it’s actually kind of interesting so I’ll give the film credit there. Of course it is explained later on but even if it wasn’t that’s the kind of randomness that can make the situation even scarier.

Fortunately she has the help of Officer Jack who believes there is something to this. Unfortunately the rest of the police don’t buy this so he’s on his own. Now it’s great that he believes since there is some evidence to support it at least but the guy is super sloppy. So the biggest potential evidence here are the phone calls right? Tangible calls that you could trace to see what is going on. Well…over halfway into the film he remembers that you can do this and looks them up but it was such a basic thing he could have tried from the start that it really stands out. You just think “Cmon man” because it would have been easier if the film just said all records mysteriously weren’t there. Really make this as supernatural as possible.

After all this is supernatural so why would it need to follow conventional rules anyway? Jack mainly does good here but I do have to say that one mistake so many characters make is putting their eye right next to the keyhole. Seriously even in real life you don’t want to do that because the door isn’t very well secured at all. Just being near it is a dangerously bad idea. Trust me on this, you do not want to do that! Just stay away from the door and he was probably doomed anyway but it didn’t help matters.

We do get the tragic backstory leading up to the origin of the curse later on and the film gets fairly dark with the lore as you’d expect. Again all fairly common for this kind of film but it also just feels rather forced. I think the movie should have actually not had a backstory for what was going on here. It’s way spookier for this to be happening for no real reason. Just give us a way to actually fight back and then you’re set. For example, that giant undead creature from the opening was super spooky so that’s all you need on the scares front. Have the team try to figure out a way to defeat it.

I knew the film would be cheating as soon as the Star Wars “Force Choke” scene happened. So one girl named Taylor had a really good idea. She allowed herself to be recruited by a supernatural TV show where they record people being possessed and try to save them. These guys may be crazy or scammers but now she’s surrounded at least right? Well the ghost/demon/mysterious villain shows up anyway and just chokes her using invisible intangible powers. There was nothing Taylor or anyone could do and that’s when I realized how futile this was going to be. The villain was too powerful.

In any horror film you have to try and balance out the villain being really powerful and imposing while also giving the heroes some kind of chance to fight back. There always has to be some hope or else why are you even watching right? If the only option is to wait around for your death then that’s inevitably going to get boring and so the film needed to introduce more of a weakness. Taylor’s death just felt unfair the whole time because unlike the other characters I actually thought her plan was as close to full proof as possible.

I haven’t talked much about Beth and in large part that’s because there isn’t a whole lot to say about her. She really stands for being your average everyday person just trying to get out of this situation but she doesn’t have much character beyond that. You’re hoping that she will get out of this in one piece but that’s definitely not a guarantee in a film like this.

Overall, I can see why One Missed Call wasn’t really a hit. The film wasn’t super balanced and didn’t always seem to know what it wanted to do. It’s a fairly serious film with an intense threat but the world wasn’t very fleshed out and there’s nothing to write home about here. While the film isn’t super violent, you definitely do have some intense deaths here. The dark backstory is also intense of course. I did like some of the spooky visuals like the Centipede and the hand in the opening scene but that was about it. The rest of the film just didn’t land and you should give this one a hard skip.

Overall 3/10

Riddick Review

Posted on by
Reply

This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

This film is definitely very ambitious. It actually does something that I thought was clever which I’ll get into but ultimately it’s squandered away by tons of animal violence throughout the film and another batch of super unlikable characters. Seriously there is at least one character here who really should have gotten taken out way sooner. This is a survival film through and through which doesn’t hold back.

The movie starts off with Riddick stranded on a desert planet. See, he may have been strong back in the day but he’s lost a step once he became king. He allows himself to be suckered by the most obvious traitor of all time and gets absolutely devastated. I couldn’t believe this, he really just lost to a super whiny character in a situation that was obviously a trap? Well, Riddick has decided to see the silver lining here and figures he will train until he is ruthless and a super powerful beast again. The first half of the film is about him learning how each of the different wildlife acts and adapting himself in turn. It doesn’t make for a very enjoyable watch but it’s interesting. See I thought the whole film was going to be about this and it would have been an experimental film without much dialogue.

Then the two annoying groups of bounty hunters show up and I realized the angle that I liked here. See, when a group shows up on an alien planet the movie is always about them getting picked off one by one from the mysterious alien creatures and the serial killer on the loose. Well, this time we got to see all of them first and then we’re introduced to the villains. So it was sort of a reverse scenario right there. I like the idea behind it at least but the film doesn’t really make the most of it. First off the original group are basically all villains with no interests greater than their primal desires. One of them wants to assault the heroine from the second film throughout the movie, the main guy just wants the money for capturing and murdering Riddick, the other are here for money.

There isn’t much to these villains and the problem is that the personalities that we do get just aren’t that good. For example the perverted villain should have been murdered several times during the movie. Each time the girl would beat him up which is cool and all but considering his intentions he should have absolutely been murdered the second time. I was hoping Riddick really had sabotaged the equipment room so that as soon as the guy opened it, it would blow up. That would have been fantastic because this guy seriously didn’t contribute anything. Bumping him out of the movie would have been a great idea.

The main villain is your classic coward who can only make a move when everything is in his favor. Otherwise the guy just folds immediately and really isn’t much of a leader. So that leads us to the second group and at least they were decent. The leader is the father of the main villain from the first film and unlike his son he actually seems like a very capable commander. The tension here is wondering if the guy will turn evil and fold at the first sign of adversity like his son or if he will do well to the end. It works as a nice parallel even if you have a general idea of where this will go. The movie does a good job of giving you enough fake-outs and turns to keep you guessing. He was a good character though.

I also liked Dahl who was the lady who kept beating up the first punk. She was tough and could hold her own in a fight. Considering how often she was targeted Dahl did a great job of always watching her back and keeping her gun ready. I just feel like keeping the guy alive was too much of a risk considering that he had no moral compass at all. The rest of the mercenaries are mainly forgettable but in general the team of professionals were way better than the random bunch of bounty hunters.

Riddick was back to looking like a true professional after the opening scene so he was really good here. He perhaps took too many risks though once he tried bartering with the other hunters. I feel like his plan wasn’t very strong when he went off to meet them and could have been picked off at any time. He had the power cores as insurance but even so it was a really big gamble that ultimately didn’t pay off. He lost his dog as a result of his plan after all.

Horrible scene by the way and one of the many moments that doomed this film. The instant he adopted an alien dog I knew things weren’t going well and that’s always rough. It’s come to the point where you don’t want to see an animal in any film because you know that’s going to be used as easy revenge bait. Films need to resist this and yet they have not been able to so far. I need the film to surpass its limits and go away from that but it’s probably going to be a while at this rate. Beyond the dog you also have a lot of creatures getting eaten and ripped to pieces either by Riddick or by other creatures.

It’s one reason why survival films rarely end up being very good because part of the genre is seeing what the heroes are surviving and inevitably that means a bunch of animals are going to die. It’s unfortunate but that’s usually what it boils down to. This film goes back to embracing the violence on a high scale like the first film and definitely gets really excessive. Throw in the sub par cast of character and you really have a losing formula here. It’s easily the weakest of the 3 films so the movie series ends on a sour note.

Overall, There’s no real reason to watch this film. You’re better off watching the original if you want the alien plot or checking out the second one for the lore. Of course all the lore gets thrown out here as they make Riddick look super sloppy to have an excuse for the film 2 cast to beat him up. The opening just makes him look soooo bad. I also feel like it wasn’t smart to change the venue so drastically like this because it makes film 2 completely pointless but I suppose it is what it is. Maybe if we get a 4th film they’ll course correct again and go back to the sci-fi wars of the second film. That would actually be pretty funny but something tells me the 4th film will take a while.

Overall 1/10